WHY SO SERIOUS

[Music]

hi guys

my name is ayappa i’m a partner

and director at early man film

some of you may be wondering why a

filmmaker whose specialization is

advertising

is giving a ted talk because let’s face

people hate ads when i say commercial

break

what is your first thought i asked my

mom what is the feeling

she got every time she saw a commercial

break her answer

so irritating so ask more people what

they thought

here are the best ones bore

annoying stupid i want to punch the ad

makers

and my personal favorite puke

it’s sad because it wasn’t always like

this when i was growing up i used to

love ads

so much that i ended up making them i

used to wait for commercial breaks and

see

piotr and personal party’s great ass for

center shock and fevicol

we used to discuss it with our friends

advertising was cool advertising created

popular culture

advertising was doing edgier work than

films feature films

of course the times were different then

and unlike today we didn’t have a

plethora of options to entertain us like

we do now

but that’s actually not an excuse in

fact it should better your output

look at feature films and the tv series

coming out of india now it’s such great

work

films and tv series have taken giant

leaps forward but the same cannot be

said about advertising

which is sad because advertising films

are in a very unique place

you can jump from genre to genre you

really test

your storytelling capabilities because

you have to communicate so many feelings

and emotions and things in like

30 seconds in such a short duration you

have access to huge budgets

much more than feature films which means

you can employ the best crew you can

you have enough time to work on your

commercial you can really indulge

you can shoot 50 takes of the same shot

over analyze the color of a curtain

get 10 options to choose from and then

still throw a creative tantrum and

pretend to be unhappy you don’t have all

these luxuries in

long form i didn’t realize this until i

shot a tv series for amazon last year

we were shooting six minutes a day

that’s about 360 seconds a day

and how many seconds do we shoot in tv

commercials

30 and yet the result is beyond dismal

and there’s no reason it should be today

commercials are either just screaming

some useless

product information at you or it’s some

goody goody husband wife mouthing lame

lines while giving each other these

romantic looks

it could be safe clients it could be

lazy creativity

it’s not just enough to come up with a

great and crazy idea

everybody has good ideas that’s what we

do but you have to get a brand to

believe in it as much as you do

and the moment you show hesitation or

weakness or even worse self-doubt

that’s the end of the idea then you have

to find a director

who’s going to handle it sensitively and

not screw it up so many times you see an

inkling of an idea destroyed with

lazy execution not that it’s a smooth

ride for the director either

everybody involved in the project has an

opinion which is fair when you’re paying

money for something you will have an

opinion

when i’m building my house i am going to

tell the architect what color to paint

the walls and piss them off

in advertising film production we have

something called the ppm

the pre-production meeting in which the

agency creatives and the director have

to present their vision of the film to

the client which most people dread

and over these years i’ve noticed these

two issues and concerns keep cropping up

one the film should look premium and

upmarket

which means don’t have dark skinned

people have only fair skinned people and

fake looking houses you’ve seen

advertising houses right

have you ever seen a single house like

that in india i saw a commercial where a

kid returning home from school

is greeted by his dad who’s standing in

this huge lawn and he’s wearing like

this

british overcoat and this beret looks

like sherlock holmes

and looks ridiculous no no indian dad

dresses up like that

how will people believe you or connect

with you

number two don’t make it dark which is a

really strange thing to say when your

film is set at night it’s night it will

be dark unless you live in iceland

so it’s all these buzzwords that have

been passed down

decades and decades from conference room

to conference room

uh it’s becoming an industry in itself

and there’s no logic or any

justification to it

now i’m going to show you a couple of

long commercials that don’t add you to

these rules

and will also help me fill up my

mandatory 18 minutes so i don’t have to

talk so much

the first one is for ambuja cement

starting the wrestler khali

initially we had a lot of outlandish

scenes about a man with superhuman

strength

but then we decided to do the opposite

of how we would approach a job like this

so indians like loud humor let’s do

something subtle ads must have good

looking people let’s only cut strange

looking people

and we ended up we played down the joke

and treated it like a documentary about

a man who’s cursed with strength

[Applause]

[Music]

you notice the last shot his eyes are

darting nervously from one side to

another

a lot of people in front of the camera

do that once they finish a take

because it’s an uncertain moment for

them and they’re seeking approval from

a director or whatever so we kept the

cameras rolling even after that even

after saying cut and we got those

expressions of kali being slightly

unsure

and we used that in the film and it

showed us a very real and endearing side

to him and it ends up humanizing him

it breaks the fourth wall between the ad

and the viewer because it’s real and

unstaged and raw and

you can’t you can see the person behind

the star so you have to

keep looking for things like this when

you’re shooting things that cannot be

storyboarded or explained

all these happy creative accidents and

that’s what makes work fresh

the next commercial i’m going to play is

a public service announcement

which doesn’t have deaf blind or

limbless people which is the first for

indian advertising

but it still manages to elicit a strong

emotional response

some opinions may differ but advertising

is not pure art you can approach your

creative process

and your approach to it can be like art

but end of the day it is a commercial

art

some years ago at cannes you had the

film festival followed by the

pornographic film festival

and then you had the advertising film

festival just to put things in

perspective

but every once in a while you can toy

with that by creating a storyline and

visuals that are a little more abstract

and something that draws you in because

of its mystery and invites you to

interpret the images

as an intelligent viewer

[Music]

if you’re feeling a bit emotional after

seeing that don’t worry the next one

will change that

because i’ve been instructed to speak on

the cred campaign that ran a month ago

on the ipl

you know it’s like one of those

ridiculous scripts that you present at a

meeting and then you go haha just joking

and then you present the actual one but

yeah you had a client who was egging you

on and

getting you to push it more and more and

that’s great because then

you have the freedom to do what you want

and you have to deliver because you

can’t blame the client later if it turns

out like

baby i am your otp

when we come together payment is easy

downloaded baby download

this campaign poked fun at lazy

copywriting hiding behind celebrities

and masquerading as ideas

it also proved that in bollywood if you

pay enough money celebrities will do

anything

the campaign was fearless because the

client and the creatives understood

that people want entertainment they

don’t want ads

we will never default on our love story

download facebook seriously let’s just

do a simple voiceover like download

credit sometimes the creative risks that

you take

just don’t work out because you have to

take take them for the right people

sometime back we were in delhi and we

were presenting a film that the agency

and me thought it turned out quite well

because

we had really worked hard on it and

we presented the film with a lot of

pride

but there was like radio silence from

the other end of the conference room

and uh they hated the film and they said

this is the worst film we’ve seen it’s

not funny

it’s too subtle and really launched into

and uh in fact then one of them started

acting out some scene from some

david darwin film and said this is how

we should have pitched the acting

and then it would have been funny and

after all that they said we’re not going

to pay you

the balance that they owed us really

smart guys

so uh we were really shocked and i took

a photo of this

moment does it look like these guys

are going to buy anything half decent no

chance you’re wasting your time

and you’re just getting the solution i

look at this photo every time i go meet

a client for a film briefing to remind

myself that everybody has opinions

but you should only take the ones that

matter to you still i’ve had many films

bombed

so either you’re a director or

maybe the work that you’re doing is

radical and far away from the current

cliches

and you need to know the difference of

course so one should not get bogged down

by rejection

especially when you know what you’ve

done is good in fact you should take it

as a compliment

because historically people have always

react reacted negatively when they see

something new

even visionary works like kubrick’s 2001

space odyssey was panned by critics and

the people when it came out in 1968.

today it’s considered the greatest

sci-fi film ever made after koemelga of

course

my amazing luck seems to have followed

me into long format as well the show

that i had worked on for three years has

run into some trouble because of the new

otd censorship laws blah blah blah

of course it’s very upsetting and

unsettling but this is the time we live

everybody’s so busy virtual signaling

and getting offended with everything

and indians suck at self-deprecation we

don’t we really don’t know how to laugh

at ourselves

and networks are scared of this

unreasonable backlash and this is

creativity’s biggest enemy because

then you’re trying to second guess that

a section of society is going to get

offended

and that really affects your output and

blunts your age as a writer

considering the current climate of the

country it’s

ironic that this statement came from

arun jaitley

what he’s saying is great because uh

well-meaning criticism in the form of a

joke

is good because it gives you objectivity

and is an opportunity for you to better

yourself

so it’s good to laugh at others laugh at

yourself it’s therapeutic

and makes you a better person look at

all the edgy content on social media

like hilarious insta stories and memes

this is what the top boss in a meeting

called it we need to connect with the

indian youths with mems

so take a look at this men

[Music]

years after i’ve seen it it’s still so

irreverent and funny

and this is what ads are up against to

the future because tv advertising isn’t

dead it’s just going digital

and you have to adapt to a more

irreverent and edgy sensibility for it

to work online

of course india is still a very heavy tv

market and most ads are still made for

tv but

when those commercials are adapted to

digital it can’t be as simple as

shooting the same commercial in a 9 by

16 vertical format

it’s not just a technical adaptation it

should be an ideological adaptation

so the old rules don’t apply dads can’t

be wearing berries in a tropical country

like india

advertising films have to stay edgy and

relevant because people want to be

entertained

and if they entertain then maybe just

maybe they listen to what you’re selling

many years ago when i was traveling i

saw an old lady in the smoking section

at the osaka airport

her she must have been about 85 and her

job

was to clean one of those big dustbin

shaped ashtrays

in the airport smoking lounge so that

ashley had these two compartments so she

meticulously

took took it apart and emptied the bus

and the ash from both

and then she took the bottom part and

took a cloth and started cleaning it

from

uh cleaning the whole thing and really

wiping it until it shows then she kept

it back and then she took the top part

she took another cloth and started

wiping it wiping it until it was really

gleaming

and then she put both of them together

and it looked like

it belonged in some museum it was like

shining so

bright and looks so nice and clean what

was a

routine two minute job took her 15

minutes to do

she was really into it and i was sitting

there and enjoying this

magical illusion when suddenly two guys

came and stubbed their cigarettes

and uh it was spoiled and it ruined the

effect

my point is if an old lady can devote so

much passion

into something as inconsequential and

mundane as cleaning and ashtray

so why can’t we do our best in whatever

we do so whether you’re making a tv

commercial

or a feature film or even making maggie

for dinner

do it in the best way possible because

when you push the limits of your craft

you just push the world forward just a

little bit and that

in turn may end up as inspiration for

somebody else

[Music]